


for worse or for better (we said forever forever ago)

by gravityinglass



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dream Sharing, M/M, Magical Realism, Rated T for language but otherwise G
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 09:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17978405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gravityinglass/pseuds/gravityinglass
Summary: Brinksy meets Dylan at the airport, hat pushed back and wearing honest to god bedazzled Crocs.“Do I even wanna ask?” is the first thing Dylan says to Brinsky in person in three months. He’s a sight for sore eyes, honestly, even if the bedazzled Crocs are an eyesore in and of themselves.“My lab head has a bedazzler and there’s only so long you can wait for data to compile before you get curious about what you can use that thing on,” Brinksy says, cheerful as ever. He drags Dylan into a hug, pushing up onto his tiptoes to smack a kiss to Dylan’s cheek. “Hey, welcome to Chicago, man, the city that’s recently been taken over by the freezing hands of Satan himself.”Dylan snorted. “What happened to telling me Chicago was the best city in the greater USA?”“You’re here now, I don’t have to trick you into moving here anymore. C’mon, it’s not like you’re gonna get back on a plane to Arizona at this point.”“Technically--”“Pft, technically. C’mon, gimme your carry-on. Ralph misses you.--Or, Dylan and Alex have a soulbond. No matter how much Dylan insists to himself he's not going to fall in love with Alex, fate seems to have different plans.





	for worse or for better (we said forever forever ago)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dylansstrome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dylansstrome/gifts).



> This is for Dee as part of the Dylan Strome exchange! All your prompts were amazing but unfortunately I don’t know enough about theatre to pull off a theatre au. On the other hand, I can absolutely do magical realism, fake dating, and boys being in love.
> 
> The soundtrack to this fic is the Maine’s Lovely Little Lonely; particularly Don’t Come Down and The Sound of Reverie. The title is from Do You Remember? (the other half of 23).
> 
> I apologize to anyone who has attended either the University of Arizona at Phoenix or the University of Illinois Chicago, and particularly anyone in either of those schools engineering departments. I have never visited and made up a lot of information about your universities, both of which I am sure are lovely, but as this is a fic, I do not have the research budget required to travel and visit for accuracy’s sake.

 

Brinksy meets Dylan at the airport, hat pushed back and wearing honest to god bedazzled Crocs.

“Do I even wanna ask?” is the first thing Dylan says to Brinsky in person in three months. He’s a sight for sore eyes, honestly, even if the bedazzled Crocs are an eyesore in and of themselves.

“My lab head has a bedazzler and there’s only so long you can wait for data to compile before you get curious about what you can use that thing on,” Brinksy says, cheerful as ever. He drags Dylan into a hug, pushing up onto his tiptoes to smack a kiss to Dylan’s cheek. “Hey, welcome to Chicago, man, the city that’s recently been taken over by the freezing hands of Satan himself.”

Dylan snorted. “What happened to telling me Chicago was the best city in the greater USA?”

“You’re here now, I don’t have to trick you into moving here anymore. C’mon, it’s not like you’re gonna get back on a plane to Arizona at this point.”

“Technically--”

“Pft,  _ technically _ . C’mon, gimme your carry-on. Ralph misses you.”

Dylan had spent a lot of time in airports, but never O’Hare. Luckily Brinksy was a little more familiar with it, and they collected Dylan's giant suitcases with relative ease.

Brinksy’s car was the same as always, a third-hand station wagon he loved dearly and defended with a purely Brinksy fervor. Brinksy didn't do anything halfway, and the adoration he had for his car was one of those things. He drove the way he always did, rattling on about his undergrad thesis advisor and periodically interrupting himself to swear at other drivers. The radio blared a mix of classic rock and bubblegum pop as they wove through traffic.

It was comforting to know some things never changed. Brinksy was still a 5’8 firecracker with too many emotions and Dylan figured if that was the same, everything else must be too.

“The dreams been bothering you?” Brinksy asked as he pulled into the parking garage below an apartment block. “I’ve been trying to control them, but I was super excited you were coming.”

Dylan shrugged as Brinksy swiped them into the garage with a card pass. “I kept dreaming of Ralph, but I'm not sure if that was my brain making stuff up or you spilling over.”

Brinksy grimaced.”Yeah, that was me. Sorry, Dyls. Hopefully living together will keep the spillover from being so bad.”

“You know I don’t care, dude.”

“Still. It’s like, rude and shit.”

That startled Dylan into a snicker. “When the fuck have you ever cared about that?”

“Oh, fuck off.” Brinksy parked and turned off the engine. “Ready to see your new home?”

\--

The Strome family was a lot of things--big, loud, good at hockey--but magical was not one of those things. Their whole family line as far back as anyone had managed to trace it was as distinctly non-magical as it was possible to be. Even the theoretical magics like potions and amulets seemed to lose their potencies when a Strome was present.

That was why it was weird when Dylan started having prophetic dreams, because as far as anyone could tell there was no reasonable way he was actually predicting a potential future. Magic traced through the maternal line, and Dylan’s maternal line couldn’t even activate a preset spell.

Dylan spent puberty in a lot of doctor’s offices, having blood samples drawn and being subjected to magical testing of all stripes. He registered as unmagical on every single one of them, which made the damn dreams make even less sense than they already did. It took six months, four baffled specialists, two overnight sleep studies, and one particularly disastrous attempt at influencing the future to realize Dylan wasn’t the source of the dreams.

It had been a profoundly weird afternoon when the house phone had rung, and a woman named Tracey DeBrincat had asked for Dylan by name.

Dylan’s mom had flatly refused to hand the phone over until she’d gotten an explanation. When Dylan had finally gotten the phone and a breathless preteen voice had asked him how he’d dreamed up such a perfect ice rink.

“M’Alex,” the voice had introduced himself after a full minute of rattling on about some sort of dream physics that Dylan had no hope of tracking. He had clearly been nudged and reminded to change topics. “I have magic, and I told my mom I was dreaming about you and she said we had to tell you so we could figure out what to do with the soulbond. I just figured we'd be best friends.”

So as it turned out, Dylan wasn’t spontaneously magical at all because the actual source of the magic was one tiny angry American named Alex DeBrincat who kept having his magic spill over into an unconfirmed soulbond.

\--

In Chicago, Brinksy lived in a two-bedroom apartment. Previously, he’d occupied the smaller bedroom while a grad student in his department had inhabited the master with his girlfriend.

“Saader and Alyssa are great, but holy god am I not gonna miss sharing a wall with them,” Brinsky said, leaning in the doorway. Dylan was unpacking into Brinsky’s former room, since Brinksy had moved his stuff into the master already. “If they don’t send me baby pictures when they have kids I’m gonna have to recruit you to like, break into their house and fill their kitchen with shaving cream.”

“We can definitely come up with something better than that,” Dylan said dryly. “Come on, shaving cream?”

“It’s a classic!”

Brinksy had left Dylan a queen bed and loaned him a set of sheets. They'd planned to make a Target run so Dylan could pick up his own bedding and the things that didn't fit in his suitcases, but for now the bed was made up in navy blue and looked deeply comfortable.

Ralph had already made himself at home, his nose buried under Dylan’s discarded sweatshirt. Brinksy soon joined him, sitting on the edge of the bed and scratching Ralph’s ears.

“You excited to start at UIC?”

“Kinda nervous,” Dylan admitted. He took a stack of shirts from his bigger bag and turned to put them into the dresser. “Everything went sideways with Arizona, so I'm--I don't want to get my hopes up.”

“It’s a good school. And I can introduce you to some people.” Brinksy grinned, a bright thing Dylan was intimately familiar with. “And Chicago’s got its own professional hockey team along with the amount of us in the UIC engineering department who play. We’ll find someone who can test your gear.”

“Who says I can't test my own gear?”

“When you can lay hits on yourself and fit your gear to someone who isn't a skinny stick like you, we’ll talk.” Brinksy swung his legs up so he was sprawled out on Dylan’s bed next to Ralph. “How are you not wiped? Whenever I fly I practically have to hibernate the next day.”

Dylan shrugged, finding a place to put his workout clothes. “Time zones? Your guess is as good as mine.”

Brinksy yawned. “We should take a nap, and then I'll take you over to Los Toltecos for your welcome dinner. They do margaritas the size of your head and pork carnitas that are--” Brinksy trailed off, clearly lost in pork carnita reverie.

“It better be the next Mexican food I've ever had,” Dylan warned. ”I was just living in Arizona, you know. Had some pretty amazing Mexican fusion down there.”

Brinksy sat up and pointed at Dylan, dislodging Ralph. “I don't know if it's authentic but it is fucking  _ delicious _ .”

“I'll take your word at it.”

“You won't have to, because we’re going and it’s gonna be awesome.”

Dylan just raised his eyebrows at Alex.

“Okay, no, fuck you with the judge face, put on your shoes and coat, we’re going now. C’mon, let’s go, you don't get to judge. Move it, c'mon.”

Dylan let himself be bustled out the door, leaving Ralph and the rest of his unpacking behind.

The restaurant wasn't crowded at three pm, so they settled into a booth immediately. Alex ordered for the both of them. He kept stealing sips of Dylan’s oversized margarita, too. The beard did a lot to keep the waitress from thinking Alex was still under the American drinking age, but she had carded Dylan. It was patently unfair because Dylan was from a country with a reasonable drinking age.

It didn't help that she didn't believe his Canadian driver's license and tried to demand his passport.

Brinksy just cackled and dug into the complimentary chips and salsa.

\--

Here’s how Dylan ended up in Chicago: Dylan had been studying materials and sports engineering at the University of Arizona Phoenix in a combined bachelor’s-master’s program under a mentor who’d been a nightmare to work with but talented as all get out. It had been hell to get into an individualized study program under him, considering that the University of Arizona barely had a materials engineering program, much less a sports engineering specialty, but Dylan’s other options had been going to university in Denmark or New Zealand. Then the bastard had up and died and no other professor in the entire state university system had been able to take Dylan on.

Hazards of being in an emerging field with a minimal presence in the United States, honestly.

The thing was that Dylan was actually really good at sports engineering, and had been using the Arizona Coyotes practice rink to test structural improvements in his thesis design for a lighter and sturdier chest protector.

“I’m gonna have to move to New Zealand,” he whined. “I don’t think New Zealand even has hockey. I’m gonna have to design  _ rugby gear _ .”

“Have you considered Chicago?” Brinksy asked. The Skype connection kept freezing up every few frames, and it was currently frozen on Brinksy in a regrettably neon hoody, eating whipped cream straight from the can. “UIC has a kickass materials engineering department.”

Dylan gave Brinksy a dirty look. “You’re not seducing me to systems.”

The screen unfroze, so Dylan could see Brinksy grinning at him. “Nah, I know you're attached to your gear. I'm just saying--UIC might not have an explicitly sports engineering program but the materials department isn't half bad. And hey, bonus, I'm here.”

Brinksy seemed to take Dylan’s silence as encouragement.

“I’m magic and we’re soul-bonded, you get like--residency status or whatever,” Brinksy said. “Like--I might just be a lowly systems engineer, but I know people. I bet the materials guys would love to get their hands on you.”

Dylan felt his nose wrinkle. “And what would you get it out of it?”

Brinksy winced. “So about that,” he said. “I might have, uh. Maybe implied I have a boyfriend named Dylan who goes to school out of state to get some of the systems engineering TAs to stop trying to set me up with friends and stuff.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Look,” Brinksy said. “At no point did I say I was smart about any of this. But like--I get tax and tuition breaks for being bonded too, y’know, and we lived together well back in high school, so like--why not?”

Dylan sighed. “You told them about the dreams, didn't you?”

Brinksy shrugged.”You're my soulmate, Dyls. Figured we'd be spending forever together anyways.”

When Brinksy phrased it like that, there wasn't much Dylan could say to turn him down.

\--

Despite having lived together before in dorms as teenagers, living together in an apartment as young adults was surprisingly difficult to adjust to. Places where they’d fit together before they didn’t fit anymore.

Like Brinsky’s early morning alarms. Dylan had forgotten how much he hated them, and they weren’t even sharing a room anymore.

The first morning they lived together in Chicago, Dylan woke to a loud Klaxon blaring from the next room over at a truly miserable hour. He put his head up just enough to read the clock on his bedside table--5:25 am--and thumped his head back down, pulling his pillow over his ears.

It definitely seemed that Brinksy still needed a nightmarishly loud alarm to wake himself in the morning, and he still liked going for sunrise runs. Dylan could hear Ralph whining as if he agreed with Dylan’s immediate loathing for the alarm.

The alarm probably didn’t go off for a full five minutes, but it sure felt like it. And not long after Brinksy turned off the alarm, there was a knock at Dylan’s door.

“Wanna go for a run?” Brinksy asked brightly. Ralph nudged his way into Dylan’s room through Alex’s knees and crawled into Dylan’s bed. His cold nose nudged at the backs of Dylan’s knees.

Dylan hurled a pillow at Brinksy and let that be his answer.

He heard Alex leave the apartment, whistling for Ralph, who slunk out of Dylan's bed with the reluctance of a dog who lived for warm beds and belly rubs but also really loved his human.

Dylan hauled himself out of bed at a much more decent hour--eight am--having heard Brinksy not only return from his run but shower and settle in to watch an episode of  _ Designated Survivor. _

“Are you having fun?” Dylan asked as he shuffled out of his room and towards the kitchen, in search of coffee.

“So much fun,” Brinsky called after him.

Ralph got up from the couch and trotted after Dylan into the kitchen, curling up under the kitchen table to watch as Dylan prodded the coffee maker to life and found a box of pop tarts in the cupboard above the microwave.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” he called to Brinsky in the other room.

“Milk and sugar, please!”

Dylan unwrapped a random pop tart--Cinnamon flavor, by the smell of it--and tracked down two coffee cups.

He made the two cups the same, a splash of milk and two generous spoonfuls of sugar. With the pop tart in his mouth, he carried the two mugs out into the living room.

“What’s the plan for today?” he asked after setting the cups down and taking a bite out of the pop tart.

Brinsky wrinkled his nose after taking a long pull of coffee. “How much sugar did you put in here?”

“Two spoonfuls?”

Brinksy made a face. “Too much sugar. Un, today’s plan. Um, I figured we could go see the Bean and do some touristy stuff.”

“As long as I have time to Skype Matty, I’m game. I promised I’d call him once I was settled in. I think he wants to make fun of my life choices.”

“Oh, who doesn’t want to do that?”

Dylan flipped Brinksy off.

He ended up Skyping Matty after he spent the day being hauled around Chicago’s high points by Brinksy. He’d been to Chicago once before when Matty was up for the NHL draft.

Sometimes Dylan wondered what his life would be like if he hadn’t been soul bonded to Brinksy, if he’d have played juniors like his brothers, if he’d decided to go for hockey over engineering.

He thought he had the best of it now, though. He got to design gear and would seek out a career with Bauer or Reebok, or one of the big companies, and he’d always get to play shinny. And, of course--he had Brinksy.

Once they were back home, Alex took Ralph for a walk and Dylan closed the door to his only mostly-unpacked bedroom. 

He loaded up Skype on his phone and flopped onto his bed; to his surprise, Matty answered on the first ring.

It was good to see his face, even though Matty was smirking across the screen. Dylan could see the shit-eating grin on his face even as the camera jostled around.

“How’s Hamilton?” Dylan asked, making himself comfortable.

“Same as always. How’s living with your boyfriend?”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “Not my boyfriend.”

“Oh, my bad, your magical soulmate who you share dreams with and moved countries to live with and are pretending to date for some harebrained reason you can’t explain.”

Dylan made a face. “It’s not like that.”

“Yeah, it’s like that.” Matty’s camera finally stopped shaking and focused on Matty’s nose at a truly unflattering angle. “You do realize the only thing that makes you not dating him is the fact that you’re not dating him?”

“Uh, alright.”

Matty’s camera jostled again and finally settled on a good angle. “You know what I mean. The only reason you’re not dating is because you’re not saying you’re dating.”

Dylan slumped further into his pillows. “It’s just a magic soulbond,” he said. “It just means there’s potential there. They can be platonic.”

“If that’s what you wanna tell yourself.” Matty broke into a grin. “Want to hear about the stupid stuff Nater and Mikey are doing to get out of helping Mama McLeod with the rose garden?”

\--

The thing about soulbonds was that magic spillover increased with distance.

Canada and the US have a reciprocal treaty allowing Canadian-American soul bonded pairs residency in either country, which was how Dylan ended up attending the same boarding school as Alex DeBrincat two years after the dreams started. At that point the dreams were blurring Dylan’s sense of reality to the point where the only real choices he had were either severing the bond entirely or moving closer to Alex so they could learn how to handle the spillover.

They shared a room in a boarding school dorm, linked up to a common room with three other suites. When they first met in person, Dylan was overwhelmed with the sense that he’d always known Alex. From their nightly meetings in dreamspace, that was almost true. It was a little strange, knowing all of Alex’s deepest fears and yet not knowing simple quirks like how Alex preferred to sit on the floor when watching a movie so he could stretch his legs out, or that he always made a sound not unlike a cat gagging after taking his morning vitamins.

Magic was relatively rare in the population. Magic that manifested in a soulbond was even rarer. At their school, they were one of seven bonded pairs, because the school had a special set of classes dedicated to living with magic and magic overflow. Dylan was technically held back a year so he could complete the extra classes and graduate with Brinksy, but it was a good experience. They played hockey together, did homework together.

Brinsky was probably Dylan’s best friend, even without accounting for the soulbond.

The dreams stopped for the most part, due to their proximity and Brinksy’s increasing control over his powers. Sometimes a prophetic dream slipped through--usually dumb things like what they’d have for breakfast or what sweatshirt one of their teammates would be wearing later that day--but for the most part they were roommates and friends rather than magically bound soulmates.

It didn’t totally help Dylan’s vague crush on Brinsky, but it was also better than when they’d been living an entire country away from each other. Dreaming together led to sharing deeply intimate things about themselves; living together led to knowing the most mundane of things about each other.

When it came time to either get drafted for the NHL or apply for university, both of them chose to go for education. They’d initially planned to go to university together, but then Dylan was offered a full scholarship for Arizona and Brinksy wasn’t.

“You’ve got to accept it,” Brinksy said. “We can deal with the dreams for a few years, right? You’ve gotta do it. We’re older now.”

So Dylan had done it, and it had ended poorly, and now they were back together in Chicago.

Dylan had the feeling this was the universe correcting itself, but he wasn’t really ready to lend voice to that thought.

\--

Brinsky took Dylan on a tour of the school once Dylan got his schedule so he could be oriented. The UIC campus was relatively large and snowy, with tall buildings. It was pretty empty as far as campuses went--it was still winter break, and even though there were a handful of break classes going on, according to Brinksy, the university was definitely in rest mode.

The engineering building was big and shiny; Dylan peered into several of the labs and was gratified to see they weren’t so different from what he was used to from Arizona. Brinsky chattered the whole way down the hall, clearly at home in the building.

“The coffee machine in the engineering offices never works, so always bring your own, or make sure you have a dining hall swipe,” Brinsky said. “And there’s a cat that sometimes gets into the building and no one knows where he’s from, but he’s really friendly.”

“So this is the mysterious boyfriend,” someone said from behind them. Dylan could practically see the blush rising on Brinsky’s face.

“This is the boyfriend, Dr. T,” Brinksy said flatly. “Please don’t scare him away. It took way too long to get him to Chicago.”

Dylan turned to see a man about his own height with closely cropped hair and a toothy grin.

“Me? Never.” The man extended a hand to Dylan. “Jon Toews. I’m Kitty’s senior thesis advisor. We’ve heard so much about you.”

There were a lot of things Dylan could imagine Brinksy had said, and there were a lot of polite things Dylan could say in greeting. Instead, he came out with “ _ you’re _ the one with the bedazzler?”

Brinsky snickered. “This would be him, yeah.”

Jon Toews rolled his eyes. “I have a three-year-old niece who wanted the sparkliest mermaid costume for Halloween and I thought I’d take a stab at it. Somehow the bedazzler ended up in my lab.” He paused. “No comment on the fact we call him Kitty?”

“I went to the same high school as this guy,” Dylan said, jerking his thumb at Alex. “You’re gonna have to dig way deeper.”

“We played on the same line,” Brinksy added.”He was my center.”

Dr. Toews’ eyebrows rose. “Another hockey player, huh? Maybe we really should get an engineering department team together.”

“You really want to put Q on skates?” Brinsky chipped in. “The man looks haunted whenever you point out Chicago’s record.  _ And  _ he’s pushing sixty.”

Dr. Toews’ shrugged. “He can coach. He’s in the middle of his transfer to partial retirement anyways. Maybe we can get Murphy from Biomaterials? He seems like he’d be defensively sound. He’s definitely defensively sound when he’s not sharing the good donuts at departmental meetings.”

“Not to get in the middle of departmental beer league planning,” Dylan cut in. “But I’d probably help if I knew any of these people before we started debating hockey positions for them.”

“Oh, shit, yeah, should finish the tour.” Brinksy saluted Dr. Toews and led Dylan down yet another hallway.

“Dr. T works in the regular systems engineering stuff, but I've gotta introduce you to Dr. Sharp. He runs the magical engineering classes for the department--I bet you anything he becomes your advisor.”

After Brinsky finished his tour, they ended up in an on-campus cafe that Brinksy swore up and down had the best bagels in Chicago. Dylan was dubious, but he had to admit they were pretty tasty.

“I’m just saying, if you haven’t tried every bagel shop in Chicago, you can’t say it’s the best in Chicago, y’know?” he said, taking a bite of his guaco club.

He’d been dubious about a jalapeno bagel and its variety of toppings, including guacamole and bacon, but it was delicious. Brinksy had ordered something else for himself--something called the General’s Choice--which had made Dylan suspicious.

“But if it’s the tastiest bagel I’ve ever had and other bagels in Chicago don’t live up to it, why would I want to visit any other bagel shop?” Brinsky gestured widely, talking through a mouthful of food. His eyes were lit up in the way they were when there was a low-stakes argument at play; he’d happily debate something all day.

“Well, you can say it’s the best bagel you’ve ever had, but you can’t say it’s definitely the best in Chicago, y’know?”

Brinksy rolled his eyes. “Semantics. You can’t tell me that’s not a delicious fuckin’ bagel, though. I know what you like.”

“Jalapenos and cheese? Everyone likes jalapenos and cheese.”

Brinksy kicked Dylan under the table. “Let me have this one.”

Dylan could let him have this one, but the bickering between them was more fun.

\--

Dylan settled into Chicago as the weeks turned into months. He'd never quite felt at home in Arizona, for a lot of indescribable reasons. The weather was never what he expected it to be, and he never settled into the residence halls or his department the way he’d have liked to. In Chicago, though, he knew it was going to be cold until April, there was a thriving hip-hop scene that Alex liked dragging Dylan out to, and his coursework was steadily more difficult.

There were good people he missed from Arizona, though. He still got regular texts from Merks and Kells, still got his ass kicked by Chych in Fortnite and kicked Fisch’s ass at Tetris99.

“How are you so bad at this?” He crowed, his phone open to FaceTime and propped up on the coffee table in the living room. “It's  _ Tetris.” _

“Shut up shut up shut up oh my God it keeps going faster--”

From next to Dylan, Brinksy snorted. He was ostensibly reviewing his notes from pre-WWI Continental Fiction for his required literature class, but he was throwing out too many chirps to really be paying his homework much attention.

“Tetris does that, yeah.”

“What the fuck, who’s targeting me?”

Dylan, who wasn’t playing Tetris anymore, popped a chip in his mouth and rolled his eyes. “There’s 99 players, it could literally be anyone.”

“I hate this,” Fisch chanted.”Hate  _ hate _ hate hate  _ hate _ oh Jesus wept oh my God oh my  _ God _ FUCK me fuck me fuck me  _ FUCK _ .”

“Still alive there, Fisch?”

There was a beat, and then a petulant. “Yes.”

“Having fun?”

“I hate you for introducing me to this game,” Fisch whined, and the screen jostled. “I lost.”

Dylan couldn't help but laugh at Fisch’s wildly indignant expression. Alex didn’t hold back either, leading Fisch to hang up on them.

Dylan flopped back on the couch. Fisch would call back when he was cooled off, and trying to redial would just get Dylan hung up on again.

Alex stretched and shoved the sleeves of his sweatshirt up.

Dylan frowned. The sleeves were suspiciously long, given how picky Brinksy was about his clothes.

“Is that my hoody?” Dylan asked. It was a hoody advertising their high school hockey team (Lake Forest Academy Varsity Hockey, go Caxys, complete with a little frog doodle) but it hung loosely on Alex’s frame. Given Brinksy’s penchant for fitted clothing, it especially looked wrong on him. Dylan had a suspicion of Alex turned around, Dylan would see his own name across Alex’s shoulders.

“It was cold so I grabbed it out of the dryer. I didn't realize it was yours until I was halfway out the door.” Brinksy pulled the collar of it up over his nose. “Warm and snuggly.”

“This better not result in you stealing all my clothes.”

Brinksy batted his eyelashes at Dylan. “Would I ever do that?”

“Yes. And then I'll be forced to steal all your clothes and stretch them out.” Dylan pointed an accusatory finger at Alex. “And it would be all your fault.”

Whatever Alex was going to say in reply was cut off by Fisch calling again on FaceTime.

It didn’t take long for Alex and Dylan to settle into a routine, but it did take a bit for Dylan to realize it was a routine. They carpooled together when they could, even though Dylan’s schedule was less than ideal due to his late registration. Alex’s alarms were still obnoxiously early, but he got better at muting them more quickly, and he usually had a thermos of coffee ready for whenever Dylan dragged himself up out of bed.

It also wasn’t terrible being Brinksy’s fake boyfriend. Mostly it consisted of meeting up to eat lunch together and hanging out in the lab while Brinksy ran simulations and tried to smooth out his models. Alex also spent a not insignificant amount of time with Dylan testing out his thesis project gear on 

They did “date nights” that mostly consisted of camping out on the couch in their boxers and watching a movie while fighting over who got the last dumpling.

“We’re gonna watch this movie,” Brinksy said with a straight face. It was hard to take him seriously when he was wearing Lion King boxers gifted to him as a joke because he’d been putting off laundry for several weeks. “I know because I dreamed about it.”

Dylan threw a fortune cookie at him, still in its cellophane wrapper. “I've been sharing your dreams every night this week and you’re full of bullshit. You didn't dream anything about movie night.”

“Maybe I dreamed about it last week.” Brinksy unwrapped the fortune cookie and snapped it in half. “C’mon, you never saw Romeo + Juliet?”

“I’ve seen Gnomeo and Juliet when Matty was twelve.”

Brinksy unfolded his fortune. “Oh look, it says Dyls and Alex watch Romeo + Juliet and Dyls will love it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, it says  _ Don’t pursue happiness--create it. _ Lucky numbers 12, 17, 19, and 21.” Brinsky poked Dylan’s thigh with his toes. “C’mon, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“It’s a bad movie and we turn it off immediately?”

“It’s got teenage Leo DiCaprio in it,” Alex sing-songed, as if that was his trump card. And in a way it was--Dylan did go a little weak for Leo DiCaprio.

Of course Brinksy knew that, because there wasn't much Brinksy didn't know about Dylan.

So Dylan caved and they watched Romeo + Juliet, and it was actually a really good movie for having come out before Dylan was born.

Even better was Alex practically lying on top of Dylan, pressing him down into the couch.

It was pleasant, this sleepy intimacy. Brinksy was Dylan's best friend, and he was a territorial little shit. Squishing Dylan into the couch was totally his style.

\--

When Alex’s dreams spilled over into Dylan's subconscious, they were one of two types. The more dramatic were seer dreams, little glimpses of the future. Brinksy was pretty powerful to even have seer dreams, but not powerful enough to predict big events. He was reliable about the weather, about when Dylan would come home in a bad mood when the store would be out of the right brand of washing powder. The more common and mundane were when his dreamscape merged with Dylan's and they dreamed together.

This dream was one of the latter.

Dylan was wandering around a house that was both his childhood home and Alex's childhood home, idly trying doorknobs with a nagging sense that there was something he needed to find, but not in any real rush.

He found Alex in his childhood bedroom, sitting on his windowsill and feet dangling over a starless void that stretched far beyond what Dylan could see.

“Hey,” he said, sitting next to Alex. “Don’t burn your last brain cell trying to think.”

“Ha ha.”

“You okay?” Dylan asked, kicking his own feet. When they weren't minor prophecies, Alex’s dreams were usually more technicolored, chains of improbable events that usually left the two of them giggling helplessly as they acted out some grand adventure. Dylan’s dreams were more traditional dreamscape, eerie constructions of everyday life that were just slightly wrong. If Dylan hadn’t known better, he’d have thought this was one of his own dreams, but the entire dreamscape rang of  _ Alex _ .

“Hm? Yeah, I guess.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just needed a quiet night to think.”

“If you say so.”

They sat in silence, watching the stars swirl above the void and hearing the hum of the washing machine from the house behind them. Dylan never knew why certain things popped up in the dreamscape, but if he had to guess Alex was probably thinking of the laundry he needed to do somewhere in the back of his mind.

“I dunno why I thought the dreams would stop altogether once we were living in the same place,” Alex said. “Kind of feels like a dumb thought now.”

“What, you tired of my face now?”

“Never,” Alex bit out fiercely. “God, Dylan, never.”

They fell into silence again. The stars took a distinctly blue tinge to them.

Dylan leaned back on his elbows and watched the sky above them, ignoring the void below. Alex would talk if he felt like talking; there was no need for Dylan to fill the quiet air between them with useless words.

“Hey Dylan?” Alex said, sounding as if he was bracing himself for something.

“Yeah?” 

“I--” Brinksy exhaled, and then cleared his throat. “I--” Alex reached for Dylan’s hand and squeezed it once. Then he leaned forward into the starless void, dragging Dylan with him.

Dylan sat upright in bed. Falling was the number one way to wake him from a shared dream, and Alex knew exactly how much Dylan hated it. He grabbed the water cup from his bedside and rolled out of bed, muttering to himself. He filled it from the cold tap in the bathroom and barged into Alex’s room.

He flicked on the overhead light and dumped the cup onto Alex’s head.

Brinksy surged awake, spluttering and wiping water out of his eyes. “What the hell?”

“What was that for?” Dylan demanded. “Why’d you pull me into the void?”

Alex wiped more water off his face, reaching for a dry corner of his sheet to keep his hair from dripping. “I don’t know? It felt like the right thing to do.”

“Felt like you were trying to avoid a conversation,” Dylan said bluntly. “Don’t do it again.”

Alex’s alarm didn’t go off for his early morning run two hours later. Instead, there was a quiet knock at Dylan’s door.

“What?” Dylan called. Ralph had followed him to bed after Dylan had dumped a cup of water all over Alex’s bed, so Ralph was curled up on one of Dylan’s pillows, snoring loudly. He jerked awake when Alex came in, carrying two Starbucks cups. 

Alex flicked the light on with his elbow, brightening the room enough to make Dylan squint. “I got you a white chocolate mocha,” he said, offering one cup.

Dylan sat up and took it. Then he waited.

Alex sat on the edge of Dylan’s bed. “So I was kind of a dick last night.”

“I hate falling.”

Alex winced. “Yeah, I know.” He took a sip of his own cup. Dylan didn’t know for certain, but he was pretty sure it was a cordusio, because Alex was kind of pretentious about his coffee like that.

“So why’d you do it?”

The expression on Alex’s face was equal parts doleful and irked. “I’m not actually sure.”

Dylan took a drink; it was still too hot to really enjoy, so he set it on his bedside table. “Uh-huh.”

“No, I--” Alex exhaled slowly. “I’m working through some stuff. I took it out on you when I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry. I’ll tell you when I know what I’m thinking and how to make sense of it.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.” Alex set his cup down next to Dylan’s and swung his legs up so he was curled up on Dylan’s bed. “Can I hang out here for a bit?”

Dylan reached across the bed and drew Alex into a hug. He could feel the muscles of Alex’s back tensing and untensing until Alex threw himself into the hug and clung to Dylan. “Don’t throw me into any more voids.”

Ralph nosed in between them, seeking out pets. Dylan let himself relax back down into the pillows.

“So I’m going to go back to sleep,” Dylan said. “You can either stay and nap or go for your run, but like. Don’t be loud.”

Alex quirked a smile at Dylan, one of those bright things that lit up his full face. There was a tinge of relief to his expression. “Can I nap with you?”

“Would I ever say no?”

\--

Dylan usually checked in with Dr. Sharp once a week if he didn’t need additional advice on his project. Usually, his classes kept him busy and inspired, but sometimes he had some clarifying questions.

Dr. Sharp’s office hours were apparently determined by the lunar calendar and if his favorite meeting room had enough sunlight that day, so Dylan was waiting in the Engineering department offices for Dr. Sharp to finish up a meeting.

Alex waited with him so they could carpool back home, except he was less waiting and more harassing Hayds into turning up the volume on his Spotify.

Seabrook was covering the other receptionist desk, but he was clearly off duty in the way Hayds wasn’t, with his feet kicked up. They were both doing work study, but Hayds had a gift for paperwork that Seabs cheerfully refused to even attempt.

“I’m a grad student,” Seabrook had told Dylan when they met. “I write my thesis and nothing else.”

“You’re lazy, is what you mean?” Hayds had called across the desks.

“I answer the phones so you don’t have to, and I help teach Public Speaking for Engineers. You can fuck right off whenever it’s convenient for you.”

Hayds was also materials engineering and shared two classes with Dylan. He’d taken a look at Dylan’s independent study coursework and promptly told Dylan he was insane. Seabrook, on the other hand, was a grad student willing to try on Dylan’s prototypes and get pucks shot at him from all angles in exchange for a pickup game now and then.

While Alex tried to change Hayds’ pop and rap playlist to something undoubtedly louder, Dylan and Seabs chatted about their plans for the rest of the week. Without looking, Dylan knew when Alex was going to throw himself into Hayds’ lap and go for an underhanded pinch to Hayds’ side. The yelp from across the room confirmed it.

“I’ve got a ton of reading to do, but Wednesdays I always try to keep clear. You two wanna come?” Seabrook asked. “Campus GSA meeting, we’ll have pizza and then a trivia game. Should be fun.”

“Nah,” Dr. Sharp called, poking his head out of his office. A freshman booked it down the hall behind him. “It’s DeStrome date night.”

“How do you know it's date night?” Dylan sputtered, while Brinksy bristled at “ _ DeStrome _ ?”, completely dropping his argument with Hayds.

Dr. Sharp looked delighted. “It’s Tuesday.”

Seabrook looked between Dylan, Brinksy and Dr. Sharp. “What’s special about Tuesdays?”

“Okay but seriously. DeStrome? That’s just his name!”

“Their favorite date spot is this Mexican place four blocks off campus.”

Seabrook blinked, considering. “Los Toltecos?”

Dr. Sharp grinned widely, showing far more teeth than Dylan felt was totally necessary. “That’s the one.”

“DeStrome. At least be interesting. Stromcat. Dylex.  _ DeStrome _ ?”

“Dylan usually comes in for our Wednesday advisory session a little hungover and walking kinda funny, and he always mentions Mexican food. Ergo, DeStrome date night.”

Dylan was usually a little hungover from the giant margaritas, true, but he was only walking funny the week before because he’d tripped over Ralph in the middle of the night and landed squarely on his tailbone. He resolved not to tell Dr Sharp that. Seabrook was making understanding noises anyways. Hayds was definitely wriggling his eyebrows.

“DeStrome, really?”

Hayds patted Alex on the shoulder. “It’s okay, bud, let it go.”

“ _ DeStrome _ ?”

Dylan looked up to see Dr. Sharp smirking at them. “Enjoy date night.”

“Yeah, I’ll be spending the next half hour talking this one down from TPing your office.”

“Such are the sacrifices we make. You had a question for me?”

“Well, I did, but now I think I’m going to have to calm him down instead.”

Dr. Sharp flapped a hand. “He’ll be fine. Hayds can handle him. And then you can calm him down with your date night.”

“I hate everything,” Dylan said flatly. He knew full well exactly how he’d be calming Alex down, and how the rest of their evening would go. They’d walk to the Mexican place after Dylan finished up with Dr. Sharp, and Alex would undoubtedly bitch the whole way. They’d hold hands, because Dylan liked holding hands and Alex had never complained. They’d have their usual--pork carnitas for Alex, enchiladas poblanos for Dylan, margaritas for them both--and then they’d walk back to campus so Alex could drive them home. They’d end up cuddling on the couch, watching something on Netflix, and then they’d take Ralph for a walk together. At the end of the night, Dylan would want to kiss Alex and hold himself back from it, and more often than not they’d end up cuddling in one of their beds, talking and watching more Netflix.

“Well,” Dr. Sharp said, slinging his arm around Dylan’s shoulder and bringing him into his office. “Good to know you’re self-aware.” As he shut the door behind them, Dr. Sharp added: “you know he’s crazy for you, right?”

“Sorry?” Dylan said, stumbling into a chair.

“Alex. He used to be--really kind of quiet. Did his work. Stuck to the lab and only a few people in Jon’s workgroup. He missed you a lot when you were in Arizona.”

Dylan looked at Dr. Sharp’s expression and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there. “What’s going on?”

“I just wanted to make sure you knew,” Dr. Sharp said. “I’ve seen some people be idiots about their roommates before. I know you’ve got your soulbond, but make sure you tell him too.”

“Uh. Okay. Thanks, Dr. Sharp.”

Dr Sharp clapped his hands. “Now, you had a question. Please tell me it’s something interesting--I’ve been doing office hours for MSE 370, and if I have to explain to another freshman why the Drude theory of conduction had to be modified I’m going to quit and become a hermit.”

\--

The evening went mostly as Dylan expected. They did go get their favorite meals at Los Toltecos, and then they headed back to the car; they did settle onto the couch, Alex becoming more and more boneless as he sagged into Dylan’s lap, watching  _ Citation Needed _ with only half his attention.

“I always wanted to be married,” Alex said drowsily, his head in Dylan’s lap. On screen, Chris was teasing Gary about going into archivist mode. Dylan always felt a little dumb watching Citation Needed, but Alex loved it. “Like. Having a person that's my person. Someone I can come home to and love and like, have on my team.”

Dylan slowed his fingers in Alex’s hair. “Sorry.”

Alex opened his eyes then. “What for?”

“Keeping you from finding that person.”

“You  _ are _ that person.” Alex snorted. “What, you think I soulbond and have prophetic dreams about just anyone?”

“You never said.”

“Didn’t think I had to.” Alex sat up, twisting so he was sitting on Dylan rather than resting his head in Dylan's lap. “So uh, you’re kind of awesome and I've been in love with you since we started dream sharing. Wanna date for real?”

Dylan leaned forward and kissed Alex, and let that be his answer.

Alex twined his fingers into Dylan’s hair, keeping him from pulling away, and immediately slipped him some tongue. Dylan let his hands drift down to Alex’s ass, getting lost in the kiss.

“You’re going to be so smug about this, aren’t you?” Dylan said once Alex let him pull away.

“I think it’s a deserved smugness.” Alex was grinning in a way that suggested he was going to use kissing as a tactic to get his way in the future, and Dylan couldn’t really find it in himself to be bothered by it. “You do realize we’ve been dating for like. Four years now.”

Dylan squawked. “No, we definitely weren’t. We were fake dating. Friend dating, whatever.”

Alex kissed the tip of Dylan’s nose, and then his mouth, lingering. “We’ve been dating for four years.”

“I hate you.”

“I have empirical proof you don’t,” Brinksy said smugly, and well--Dylan couldn’t really argue with that.


End file.
